Endeavour (Atlantia Series Book 4)

by Dean Crawford

  The captain was some eight feet tall, his face pale white and elongated as though it had been compressed. There was no hair on his head, his skull cap cracked like ancient desert riverbeds dried by a fearsome sun. Wide, angled eyes filled with deep blue iris stared back without emotion as Mikhain spoke.

  ‘Captain Mikhain, Colonial Fleet Service Arcadia,’ he announced himself, ‘also on channel is Captain Idris Sansin, Colonial Fleet Service Atlantia.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  The Morla’syn captain’s tone was detectable even though his voice had passed through a vocal resonance translator, the device worn by all species in the known galaxy in order to translate countless dialects into understandable dialogue. His refusal to identify either himself or the name of his vessel sent a tremor of consternation down Mikhain’s spine. Mikhain realised also that as the captain of the vessel closest to the new arrival he was expected to reply.

  ‘We have discovered the wreck of Endeavour, a ship that launched from our planet almost a century ago. We are attempting to find out what happened to her and have people aboard at this time.’

  The Morla’syn captain leaned closer to the camera and peered at Mikhain.

  ‘What stage has the infection reached the board your ships?’

  ‘We are uninfected,’ Mikhain replied with some pride. ‘Both Arcadia and Atlantia are clear of the Word and its infectors. At this time we are not sure about Endeavour, but we have detected no evidence of the Legion’s presence aboard her either.’

  The Morla’syn captain leaned back again from the screen but the look of suspicion did not disappear from his features. Like humans, the Morla’syn were capable of forming complex expressions that conveyed emotions, but they also sought to conceal those emotions – deeply xenophobic, they never smile or joked, never attempted to curry favour with other species. He seemed to examine Mikhain for several long seconds before he spoke again.

  ‘Why are you here, beyond the Line?’

  ‘Our mission was to attempt to find new technologies with which to fight the Word,’ Mikhain replied. ‘The only way we could do that was by travelling beyond the Line, away from where the Word holds sway. We figured that if we could obtain weapons that the Word had never encountered before, then would be able to fight it more effectively.’

  The Morla’syn captain appeared to frown as though Mikhain’s plan was unworthy, something less than the Morla’syn would have dreamed up themselves.

  ‘We have been following you,’ the Morla’syn captain revealed.

  This time, it was Idris who replied. ‘Why?’

  ‘Our vessel encountered the remains of Veng’en cruiser some months ago while on a routine patrol,’ the Morla’syn captain revealed. ‘It was in orbit within an asteroid field some light–years from here, and we detected your gravitational wake departing from the scene of the wreckage. We assumed that your vessels were infected and that you had successfully defeated the cruiser in battle, therefore we were tasked to hunt you down and destroy you.’

  Mikhain step closer to the display screen. ‘We are not infected. Who asked you to destroy us?’

  The Morla’syn captain leaned closer to the screen again and Mikhain swore he could see a look of satisfaction upon the captain’s face.

  ‘Everybody did,’ the captain replied. ‘It has been decided that any humanity remaining in the cosmos should be eradicated for the benefit of us all.’

  ***

  XXVIII

  ‘Fire!’

  The Marines opened fire as one against the massive Ogrin as it bludgeoned its way into the hold. A salvo of plasma blasts smashed into the creature’s huge chest, the rounds burrowing deep into its body to the sound of burning flesh. The Ogrin wailed in agony as it collapsed and hung dead in mid–air, surrounded by a halo of rapidly cooling globules of blue plasma.

  The smashed hatch door behind it looked like a doorway to hell, the dark hold beyond filled with a bizarre mixture of wild creatures all struggling for purchase in the zero gravity and the sound of screams both human and animal.

  ‘There are people in there!’ Evelyn yelled.

  ‘We can’t save everybody!’ Riaz shot back, and then shouted above the din to his men. ‘Cover the hatch and kill anything that comes through!’

  ‘That’s not your call!’ Andaim protested.

  ‘Your shields,’ Evelyn suggested to Riaz. ‘You could use them to get inside there and help everybody out!’

  ‘They only protect against plasma blasts!’ Riaz yelled back. ‘They’re useless against anything else, and we don’t even know how they work!’

  Even as Evelyn watched fearfully for anything else that might come crashing through toward them, she spotted patches of dim light that flickered as they moved through the air and approached the open hatchway.

  ‘What the hell are those?’

  Evelyn peered at the strange shapes that looked like lights suspended in mid–air that drifted slowly toward her. Suddenly the lights dipped downward and passed through the hatchway into the aft hold. Evelyn stared at the strange creatures, their surface a pale white and covered in bioluminescent algae that flickered in the darkness and behind them trailed long swirling coils of tentacles that draped themselves over any obstacle they found. Evelyn looked down at the corpse of the giant Ogri and saw that its skin was covered in massive welts, as though it had been stung multiple times and was in agony long before it had been shot by the Marines. Suddenly she realised why it had beaten its way through that hatch.

  ‘Get away from those things!’ Evelyn shouted. ‘They’re poisonous!’

  The Marines closest to the hatch began to fall back as the strange creatures floated through into the aft hold, their bodies pulsating as they sucked in air through cavities in their bulbous heads and then ejected the air in thin jets behind them to propel themselves forward. Before anybody could move the strange creatures were coming through the hatch in their hundreds.

  ‘We need to get out of here!’ Bra’hiv shouted.

  Evelyn turned to look at Emma, who was still standing over the computer console and talking to it as though it were alive.

  ‘You need to destroy them,’ Emma repeated over and over again.

  ‘She might be talking about us!’ Riaz snapped.

  Evelyn could see that the screen was flickering wildly now as though the machine were talking back to Emma, perhaps even arguing with her. Lieutenant Riaz dashed past them all toward the rear of the hold as he searched desperately for a potential escape route, but the walls were made of solid, featureless metal.

  ‘There’s nothing here!’ he shouted. ‘She lied to us!’

  The Marines were falling back from the damaged hatch and firing heavily upon the strange creatures billowing through them in milky clouds. The plasma blasts smashed them aside, scorching their fleshy bodies and sending them spinning through the air in vibrant colourful trails as the bioluminescent algae in their bodies flickered out like light switches. But there were far too many for the Marines to shoot and they were swiftly filling the hold.

  Evelyn heard a soldier scream as one of the creatures tumbled through the air and smashed into his face, the tentacles wrapping around his head. The soldier thrashed in agony as the stingers seared his skin and she saw his face swelling with frightening rapidity as the creature injected venom through multiple points along its tentacles into the soldier’s face. Within moments the screaming had been strangled off into an agonised garble as the soldier’s arms flopped to his sides and he collapsed slowly to the deck with the creature still clinging to his face.

  The Marines tumbled back and away from the gruesome sight as Bra’hiv grabbed Emma by the shoulders.

  ‘Do you have a way out of here or not?!’

  Emma looked down at the computer for a moment longer and then she turned to the general. ‘Start a fire,’ she instructed.

  ‘Star a what?!’

  ‘Do it,’ Emma snapped back.

  Like everybody else Evelyn
knew that fire aboard a spaceship was a lethal threat and one of the most feared ways to die in space. Bra’hiv stared at Emma as though she’d gone insane but he turned and yelled at one of his Marines.

  ‘Light something up!’

  The Marine, a flamethrower on his back, seized his weapon and turned it toward a stack of unused boxes and crates in one corner of the hold. He activated the flamethrower and fired. Evelyn shielded her face as a stream of fearsome flame streaked across the hold and smothered the boxes in an inferno. The boxes burst into flame under the onslaught and the billowing cloud of thick black smoke swelled upward from the flaming wreckage and tumbled across the ceiling.

  The Marines fell back even further from the advancing creatures now filling the air before them, clouds of lethal tentacles swirling like a shimmering wall as they advanced upon their position. The flame–throwing Marine turned his jet of burning fluid upon the advancing wall and it sprayed across the creatures, burning their flesh but ineffectual in stopping their advance.

  Evelyn crawled backwards along the deck as the huge cloud of creatures threatened to overrun her position. She aimed her pistol and was about to fire upon the nearest of them when suddenly a loud hissing sound fill the hold and in response to the smoke fire–depletion systems activated and a rain of high–pressure foam sprayed from the ceiling vents high above. The foam plunged downward into the clouds of creatures and forced them toward the deck, pummelling them into a massive mess of gelatinous flesh flattened by the force of the foam.

  ‘Ceasefire!’

  The Marines stopped firing as the lethal cloud of stinging creatures were swamped by the falling foam, their lethal tentacles now snaking across the deck but of no danger to the Marines and their heavy boots.

  Evelyn looked up as more creatures swarmed toward the open hatchway, screeching and snarling and their own bodies also covered in welts and lesions as they fought to escape the clouds of poisonous animals swarming in the forward hold. But the moment they reached the hatch and stepped into the aft hold they retreated again as their bodies were burned by the swarm of creatures pinned to the deck in mounds before the hatch.

  Stunned, Evelyn turned to look at Emma, who simply returned her gaze and smiled.

  ‘We’re still stuck in here!’ Lieutenant Riaz snapped, apparently unimpressed by Emma’s ingenious solution to the crisis.

  Evelyn got to her feet and got in Riaz’s face. ‘Give her a break!’

  ‘Or what?’

  Evelyn felt anger rising inside but she had no immediate response for the Special Forces soldier. She was about to say something when all around the Marines stood up from their positions and gathered behind her, confronting Riaz.

  ‘Or we’ll all get annoyed,’ Bra’hiv replied as he moved to Evelyn’s side.

  Commander Andaim trudged through the slimy mess on the deck and leaned his weight into the damaged hatch floating near the bulkhead. He heaved the hatch back across the opening, the metal clanging loudly as it settled into place. Andaim turned his back to it, leaning against it to prevent more of the poisonous creatures from invading the hold.

  The fire nearby was quenched by the foam, the air filled with millions of foam droplets like snow that refused to fall as Andaim looked at Evelyn.

  ‘We’ve got your back, now get us out of here.’

  Evelyn saw Riaz scowl and she suppressed a smile as she turned to Emma and looked again at the computer screen, uncertain of what she was even looking at. On impulse she reached out and swept a hand across the screen, wiping the frost away from it. She was surprised to see a face looking back at her out of the screen, but it was not a photograph. Instead, the face was indistinct and made up not of pixels but of what looked like binary code that flickered and mutated on the screen to approximate the features of a human being. For a brief moment she was reminded of the way the Legion’s Infectors swarmed together in order to likewise approximate human expressions and emotions.

  The face turned slightly on the screen and she was shocked to find it staring straight at her. A strange warbling noise was omitted by the face, the mouth moving and the expressions changing as though it was talking to in a language that she could not understand, but beside her Emma appeared to react to the noise and turned to face Evelyn.

  ‘This is God,’ Emma said.

  Evelyn stared down at the strange face in the computer screen and all of a sudden she realised what she was looking at.

  ‘It’s the Word,’ she said.

  It seemed impossible but somehow Evelyn instinctively knew that what she was witnessing was not just the random creation of a computer gone insane but was in fact an actual entity, a being, something alive and staring at her as she stared at it. Never before, in all of the time since the apocalypse, had she considered the fact that the Word might actually have a face or personality, something that she could look at and recognise as human.

  Andaim, his place at the hatch now manned by four Marines, moved to stand alongside Evelyn as he looked down at the face and listened to the warbling sounds it was making. ‘Are you sure this is what you think it is?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Evelyn said, ‘although I can’t quite believe it.’

  ‘Well then let’s blow it to hell,’ Bra’hiv snapped as he raised his rifle and aimed it at the computer console.

  ‘No!’

  Evelyn and Emma both moved at the same instant as though by shared instinct, dashing between the general and the computer console and blocking his aim with their bodies. Evelyn felt suddenly ashamed as she stood in front of the very thing that had destroyed humanity, had killed billions of lives, and blocked the aim of a man who could destroy it with a single pull of his trigger.

  She glanced at Andaim, who was watching her with a stricken expression. ‘What are you doing?’

  Evelyn gathered herself as she replied. ‘This is the ship’s computer and it’s obviously been infected by the Word. Maybe this is how it all started back on Ethera? If we destroy this now we might never learn how things began–we can use this!’

  ‘Like hell we can!’ Lieutenant Riaz snapped as he made to move Evelyn out of the way.

  Despite his reservations Andaim lunged forward and stopped the Lieutenant in his tracks. ‘You don’t give the orders here.’

  ‘I don’t take the orders here either,’ Riaz snapped back. ‘You told us that this thing is responsible for destroying humanity and now you’re defending it?’

  ‘This isn’t the version that destroyed humanity,’ Evelyn said. ‘Endeavour must’ve launched with at least one of its crew infected, or perhaps the computer itself infected with a version of the Word. But whatever it did here it’s taken a different path to what happened on Ethera.’

  ‘How the hell do you define different?’ Riaz snarled as he pointed at Emma. ‘It’s taken a crew and who knows how many other species and locked them away in escape capsules for decades! Call me cynical but that to me sounds like some kind of bad deal!’

  ‘But we don’t know why it’s done this!’ Evelyn insisted. ‘What if something else happened to the crew that wasn’t the responsibility of the Word and it attempted to protect them by placing them in stasis inside the capsules? What if it was the Word that redirected all the power and shut itself down in an attempt to preserve their lives instead?’

  The lieutenant stared at Evelyn for a long moment as he considered this new possibility, and even Bra’hiv seemed quite surprised that she had even thought of it.

  ‘You think that’s even possible?’

  ‘It’s not impossible,’ Evelyn insisted, and looked to Emma for support.

  Emma, still staring into the middle distance, replied softly.

  ‘Without what you call the Word, we would all be dead.’

  ‘What actually happened to Endeavour?’ Meyanna asked her.

  Emma’s head turned to the sound of Meyanna’s voice. ‘We travelled too far, too fast and too soon. We were not ready for the things that we were to encounter, ill–prepared for the
threats we faced and the dangers that were to be found beyond the known cosmos. We were attacked repeatedly by a species we did not understand, our hull critically damaged as we attempted to return home, but it was already far too late. Our mass drive was obliterated long before we could even begin to make the jump into super luminal travel after the first attack, and despite the best efforts of our crew were unable to repair the damage with the resources aboard. We were in the process of attempting to find a way to preserve life for long enough to reach the closest star system at sub luminal speed, a distance we calculated as being some nine light years, when many of the crew began acting strangely as though not in control of their own bodies. Engineers began re–routing power, altering the ship’s structure without orders. Officers began issuing commands to the crew that made no sense. Our captain felt that we could reach the nearest star system if we were all in stasis, but there were not enough escape capsules to protect us all and there was a great fear developing of those members of the crew who appeared mentally ill.’

  ‘What happened to the rest of the crew?’ Andaim asked.

  Emma appeared to sigh softly, not looking at Andaim as she replied. ‘Most of the crew were lost in a desperate attempt to repair the damage to our engines, when the hull was ruptured by a blast. With much of the power down none of the safety features activated in time to prevent the evacuation of one third of the ship’s atmosphere. By the time the emergency bulkheads closed in the for’ard half of the ship, we had lost far too many hands to ever be able to recover. It was then that the Word took over completely.’

  ‘What about all of those?’ the general asked as he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward the noises of animals trapped in the for’ard hold. ‘Where did they come from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Emma admitted. ‘The Word directed the surviving members of the crew to set up the escape capsules and to reroute the power from what remained of the fusion cores to the aft hold, and from here to the for’ard holds. It wanted to keep us alive for the longest time possible while the Word concentrated on sealing the ship and protecting what atmosphere remained should we ever be able to awake again. The Word protected us, and I can only assume that as it stumbled across new species it attempted to protect them too.’